Giant mushrooms and sore bums

The weather in Washington has finally turned to the sun. It has been very cold and rainy here since ummmm.....forever? January? I can't remember the last time we had multiple days of sun and in the past, even when it has been sunny it has still been freezing. Well, not this weekend. We hit the low 70s, I broke out my favorite Patagucci skirt, and life was so damn good.

We spent Saturday hanging out with friends! A rare treat in this land of not too many friends. I was friends with a couple, Lisa and Jim, back when I lived in Gustavus, AK. Lisa and Jim moved to CA awhile after I left Gustavus, and spent a ton of energy trying to get back to the town we all love. Lisa just landed a great job with the national park and they are moving back! So they stopped in Anacortes, with their kid (who I never met until now), Cooper, and we headed out to the Rockfish Grill/Anacortes Brewery to celebrate their move. Cooper was a riot - we loved him! And it was great to catch up with Lisa and Jim. We will see them again soon in Gustavus when we head north for a vacation in my old home town in July. When they left to drive to Bellingham to catch the ferry to Alaska, we headed to our friends Kerry and Jens house for a BBQ dinner. We stayed outside as long as possible until it got too chilly and then we headed in. I kept my skirt on all day; I was determined to pretend it was summer.

Shaw Island

The next day Jay and I took full advantage of where we live. We rode our bikes to the San Juan Island ferries and took a boat to Shaw Island. Shaw is the least explored of the four islands that the ferries service in the San Juans and we had been meaning to explore this island for a long time. What a great day to do it! It was hot (for WA) and sunny. What a great playground we live in! We got off the ferry, grabbed two cold beers from the tiny store on the island, and biked to the county park. We nestled into the warm sandy beach and fried ourselves like good sun-deprived nuggets. After a while we realized we were not going to see any of the island if we didn't peel ourselves away from the warm beach. So we finally got on our bikes and spent two hours biking all around the island. It isn't that big of an island and we managed to see most of what we could from the public roads. It was hilly. My bum is sore! Wow! And life is good. Real good.

Jay loves his bike!

The quintessential Washington view - the green and white ferries and the Olympic Mountains

Ohhh and last weekend - we found these gigantic and tasty oyster mushrooms. Boy oh boy!